I have a customer, that runs two C3000 Enclosures with 7 BL460c G6 Servers each. The servers run RedHat or ESX.We have to patch this environment (BIOS, ILO, OA, internal Disks, internal NICs, internal RAID controller, ...) The systems are some 4 years old.It is requested to apply only those patches, that are absolutely required, which raises the questions, which of the 500 Patches listed by HPSUM are required and which are dependdnt on each other?

All patched servers will unmount all external disks and not run any application during all patchtasks.In addition, there are two MSAs connected, which have to be patched too. Some of the MSA Disks will be patched too, some will not be patched as they are not in our responsibility.The LAN Switches in the Enclosure will be patched by someone else prior to our patchsessions. They are not in our responsibility.The FC Switches seem to be up to date.RedHat and ESX will not be touched.Two servers in each Enclosure are not in our responsibility and will not be touched.SMH is not working right now. It seems to require some patches.Not all servers can see each other through the lan as there are blocked routes.

The Environment holds some testservers, which should be patched remotely in a first step.The productive servers and everything belonging to the enclosure and MSA will patched in a second (and probably third) session.

Now, I got two different advices from HP:

1) manually install several patches on the servers / on the enclosure in a distinct order which updates the Environment step by step from the oldest firmware to a up-to-date release.